I made a Woolly Mammoth clone a couple weeks back.

After seeing a few people in various places online build their own I figured I would give it a shot myself. I'm reasonably handy and already had most of the tools I'd need to get it done, and the parts (even buying double what I needed in mist instances, just in case) ran me about $50.

It took me about 7 hours to do (all in one sitting), but withough much frustration or difficulty I got it done. The only thing I'm having trouble with is the LED. For some reason, the simplest aspect of it is giving me trouble. However it doesn't affect the sound at all.

Here is a video I made before final assembly. It's recorded with my iPhone, and was done on x-mas day just before I had to leave to help with getting all the food ready, but at least it's something:

And here's a photo of the finished product. I'm thinking of painting it, but I haven't gotten around to it yet:

All in all I had a lot of fun, and I hope to build some more in the future! I may actually build another one of these and clean up the wiring and whatnot. It's a big mess inside and I have the vast majority of components already from the first build.

I may cut all the wiring out and re-wire it up with solid core wire. I used braided and did the wiring with all the components uninstalled. I think that installing everything first and using solid core (which is easier to solder nicely) would result in much more clean internals.

I think it's just all in my head but why do all the clones I've come across never sound like the real thing?

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I've never played a real one through my practice rig so I can't compare, really, but as far as this particular build goes there is a resistor value that doesn't seem to be made any longer, or that's nearly impossible to find, so I used a different value, so that could be part of it.

Also, caps, while the same values, come in all different flavors of manufacturers which might have an effect. And transistors, from all I've read, can sound totally different, even if they're the same, because of variances in what they're actually doing versus what they should be doing, which is why a lot of people socket them, so they can pop new ones in and out.

This was also recorded with a phone through a practice amp. While its a nice phone, it still a phone and its still picking it up with a mic.

Lastly, most of these, from what I've seen on YouTube, seem to be built by people with about as much experience as me, which isn't much. But with everyone building them with different brand components, maybe having to compensate for something or change something, etc, etc, they're probably all going to sound somewhat different.

The best I can say is that I'm happy with it and that it has totally made our guitar player jealous. It burns down the building through my 400+ and I've not used my Big Muff once since I've built this, other to compare.

I'm not saying it sounds bad or doesn't come close. It sounds like 95% of the real thing but that's just me. The phone actually did a nice job picking up the lows. I'm jealous of your building skills that's all. haha

I'm not saying it sounds bad or doesn't come close. It sounds like 95% of the real thing but that's just me. The phone actually did a nice job picking up the lows. I'm jealous of your building skills that's all. haha

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Heh. Thanks man.

I didn't take offense to anything you said, so I didn't mean to come off as defensive. I was just trying to explain why I thought it sounded different.

I've noticed at least subtle differences in clips I've heard online. I think some of it has to do with recording and a lot of it comes from amateurs doing the work.

I'm planning on building another one in the somewhat near future and it'll be interesting to see if they sound different.